New $29 Million Grant Awarded to 5 Main Youngsters’s Hospitals for Bettering Pandemic Preparedness

A gaggle of kids’s hospitals from throughout the nation will coordinate response to future pandemics and different disasters by way of a brand new $29 million grant from the Well being Assets and Companies Administration (HRSA). The group, referred to as the Pediatric Pandemic Community (PPN), will give attention to the distinctive wants and challenges confronted by youngsters throughout pandemics and disasters, making certain well being fairness is on the forefront of emergency planning.

The 5 hospitals are:

• Youngsters’s Nationwide Hospital in Washington, DC (lead establishment)
• Ann & Robert H. Lurie Youngsters’s Hospital of Chicago
• College of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Pediatrics at Youngsters’s of Alabama
• Youngsters’s Mercy Kansas Metropolis
• Seattle Youngsters’s

As the present pandemic has confirmed to the world, pandemics and public well being crises amplify pre-existing environmental, well being, social and financial inequalities. Communities of shade not solely really feel the impression of pandemics and disasters rather more severely than others, but in addition battle to get assist and help. If the wants of weak populations should not taken into consideration in emergency planning, the nationwide catastrophe preparedness technique for all might fail.”

Joelle Simpson, MD, MPH, principal investigator of this grant and chief of division of Emergency Medication and medical director of Emergency Preparedness at Youngsters’s Nationwide

The hospitals acknowledge that whereas the COVID-19 pandemic is devastating the complete world, the pediatric inhabitants particularly is being challenged by a scarcity of established coordination amongst pediatric well being care suppliers. Along with addressing well being fairness, the funding facilitates:

• Set up pathways to gather and disseminate research-based insights on baby care in a future pandemic to each medical suppliers and civil society organizations.
• Develop a telehealth infrastructure to assist take care of acutely unwell youngsters and increase entry to psychological well being care.
• Increasing child-centred emergency preparedness and planning with a give attention to behavioral well being, social assist and academic providers, all of that are sometimes supplied by civil society organisations.

The point of interest for this grant is positioned on the lately opened Youngsters’s Nationwide Analysis & Innovation Campus – the location of the previous Walter Reed Military Medical Heart in Washington, DC. The work will happen within the renovated Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the place earlier researchers make groundbreaking discoveries in infectious illnesses and pandemics. The previous campus was named after Walter Reed for his work discovering the trigger and stopping yellow fever outbreaks. This contemporary staff of doctor researchers plans to make an equally vital contribution to future pandemics and different disasters to assist protect the well being of our nation’s youngsters.

In September 2021, HRSA launched the regional PPN by funding 5 pediatric hospitals to assist the planning and preparation of kids’s hospitals to reply to a world well being menace. This new grant doubles the dimensions and attain of the community to profit all youngsters within the nation.